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Don't tell me they found Tyrannosaurus rex meat again!2 weeks ago in Genomics, Medicine, and Pseudoscience
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Course Corrections4 months ago in Angry by Choice
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The Site is Dead, Long Live the Site2 years ago in Catalogue of Organisms
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The Site is Dead, Long Live the Site2 years ago in Variety of Life
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Does mathematics carry human biases?4 years ago in PLEKTIX
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A New Placodont from the Late Triassic of China5 years ago in Chinleana
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Posted: July 22, 2018 at 03:03PM6 years ago in Field Notes
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Bryophyte Herbarium Survey6 years ago in Moss Plants and More
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WE MOVED!8 years ago in Games with Words
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post doc job opportunity on ribosome biochemistry!9 years ago in Protein Evolution and Other Musings
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Growing the kidney: re-blogged from Science Bitez9 years ago in The View from a Microbiologist
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Blogging Microbes- Communicating Microbiology to Netizens10 years ago in Memoirs of a Defective Brain
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The Lure of the Obscure? Guest Post by Frank Stahl12 years ago in Sex, Genes & Evolution
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Lab Rat Moving House13 years ago in Life of a Lab Rat
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in The Biology Files
A plant pundit comments on plants, the foibles and fun of academic life, and other things of interest.
Creating mythologies
One of the things the internet has done is connect previously isolated people with people who share their beliefs and viewpoints, no matter how far from the main stream they may be. The effect is empowering, and when coupled with perceived political success, fringier thinking comes out of the closet. Almost one hundred years ago, Bertrand Russell, wrote, "Individual passions, except in lunatics, produce only the germs of myths, perpetually neutralised by the indifference of others; but collective passions escape this corrective, and generate in time what appears like overwhelming evidence for wholly false beliefs." It's not that odd collective thinking didn't happen before, but it's just so much easier now, so much more prevalent now, so pervasive now. Aided and abetted by a non-descerning media, such mythologies when often repeated take on an undeserved and unmerited reality. And as a result, the majority of main stream thinkers, never having reason for organization before, finds itself wondering how to respond. HT to the Daily Doubter.
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